[ Editor’s note: following is the third guest post from the 1WD intern: the young, unpaid Shelby Vittek, who many of you will recall really shook things up with her first 1WD article (and continued that trend with her second). You can check out more of Shelby’s wine writing work at TableMatters.com, and find her on twitter at @BigBoldReds. You’re of course encouraged to chime in and let us know what you think (but keep things civil, you opinionated b*stards!). Enjoy! ]

Have you ever wanted to know what kinds of wines make up 1WineDude’s cellar? What exactly constitutes the mass of media samples he gets shipped every week? Where do they come from and exactly how many bottles are waiting to be opened and reviewed?

I used to wonder. But that was long before I spent months sorting through the endless boxes of wine samples in the cellar. In October, I bravely—and perhaps somewhat stupidly—agreed to take on the massive project of cataloguing and organizing them all. I had watched this episode of 1WineDude TV, (cut to 3:25) where I got my first preview of the mountain of boxes, but really had no idea how big of a challenge I had signed up for. At the start of my “internship,” I was prepared to personally catalogue maybe a couple hundred, 500 bottles at the most, and thought I’d finish the project within four or five weeks.

Yet here we are, over four months and 820 bottles later, and I’m just finally able to announce that every single wine has been accounted for and its details entered into a tracking spreadsheet. Of course, this number is bound to change the next time I hear the doorbell ring and am met with five more shipments of samples. But for now, the cataloging chaos has calmed, and my “wine friends” (as 1WD’s daughter calls them) have a slightly more organized home.

To celebrate the end of a huge undertaking—even if momentarily—I want to share with you some intimate details of the wines I’ve had my hands all over for months, as well as some things that surprised, perplexed, or disappointed me…

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So, like, what is this stuff, anyway?
I taste a bunch-o-wine (technical term for more than most people). So each week, I share some of my wine reviews (mostly from samples) and tasting notes with you via twitter (limited to 140 characters). They are meant to be quirky, fun, and easily-digestible reviews of currently available wines. Below is a wrap-up of those twitter wine reviews from the past week (click here for the skinny on how to read them), along with links to help you find these wines, so that you can try them for yourself. Cheers!

• 09 Stony Hill Cabernet Sauvignon (Napa Valley): Nervy Bordeaux-raised beauty, trying on stylized American perfume and dress. $60 B+ >>find this wine<<
• NV Quevedo Tawny Port (Portugal): Dried figs and spice with attitude, bite and definite self-knowledge of its crowd-pleasing poise. $22 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 10 Bogle Vineyards Old Vine Zinfandel (California): In which you reap the vibrant, spicy and bold benefits of depressed grape prices. $11 B >>find this wine<<
• NV Freixenet Cordon Negro Brut (Cava): Apples, apples, apples, apples galore, crisp apples and… hey, did I mention apples? I did? $12 B- >>find this wine<<
• 10 Breggo Savoy Spiritus Pinot Noir (Anderson Valley): A brontosaurus that can do ballet? Yep, and it can tango if you give it time. $95 A- >>find this wine<<
• 11 Poet's Leap Riesling (Columbia Valley): Imagine running a marathon, coming to a station where friendly limes serve mineral water. $20 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 07 Abacela Reserve Tempranillo (Umpqua Valley): Big, bold, dense, but ultimately in need of a puff or 2 of tobacco to calm its nerves $45 B+ >>find this wine<<
• 08 Story Winery Picnic Hill Vineyard Zinfandel (California Shenandoah Valley): Bright as the Sun, but just about as big and heavy, too $28 B >>find this wine<<
• NV Gustave Lorentz Cremant d'Alsace Rose (Alsace): A meaty, cherry-laden instant mouth celebration, served up in a bakery shop. $24 B >>find this wine<<
• 06 La Fiorita Riserva Brunello di Montalcino (Brunello di Montalcino): Surly but well-read and quick-witted; will tar U w/ chocolate. $95 A- >>find this wine<<

Welcome to a rather long-overdue episode of 1WD TV, in which I get geeky with wine maven Doug Frost and give him crap about the wines he *didn’t* pick for his list of Portugal’s 50 Greatest Wines. We express communal love for Madeira, and then Doug sort of disses Napa, but generally shows why he’s one of the most well-regarded wine educators and tasters on the planet. To find out why Doug’s picks are so controversial, fire up the vid!

1WineDudeTV Episode 56: Portugal’s Best Wines? (With Master Wine Geek Doug Frost)

I was able to get a few minutes with Doug when I was a media guest of Wines of Portugal for a lunch event at NYC’s Harold Pratt House, during which Doug and fellow Master Sommelier Evan Goldstein discussed the Top 10 wines from Doug’s list of 50 – which we then tasted paired with various (mostly meat – in fine Portuguese tradition!) courses.  My thoughts/ratings/ramblings on those controversial top ten wine picks are below, after the jump…

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I’d love to kick this post off by somehow linking Madeira to the holidays, but that would be disingenuous of me; the truth is that I love the fortified Portuguese (mostly) dessert wine, and drink it pretty much any chance I get to wrap my grubby little hands around a bottle of the stuff.

For a guy like me, discovering a forgotten bottle of Madeira in a liquor cabinet of one’s house is kind of like a pothead finding a stash of Sativas weed and a stack of previously-unreleased, high-quality Grateful Dead live bootleg recordings in one of their bedroom dresser drawers. And so, with eyes wider than a nine-year-old’s on Christmas morning, I found myself face to face with (what I think was – more on that in a minute or two) either a 1967 or 1970  Manuel de Sousa Herdeiros Verdelho Madeira.

How I got to the confines of the liquor cabinet in the first place: Last week, Mrs. Dudette had cooked up a fine pasta-and-sausage meal for us; so fine that our little Dudettelete, for whom dinner typically lasts something like fourteen hours, had cleaned her plate in record time. I mentioned that I’d just received a sample shipment of spirits, and Mrs. Dudette exclaimed that she had never once had good quality Scotch. Much “egads!” ensued (okay, all the “egads!” were mine) and I sprinted to the long-neglected liquor cabinet (you’ve got to move a small toy store’s worth of toddler stuff to get at it now), with the intention of finding an equally long-neglected, unopened bottle of The Macallan 12 Year Old Single Malt.

I knew The Macallan was in there. I did not  know that the Manuel de Sousa Herdeiros Verdelho Madeira was in there. Queue the wide-eyed wonderment…

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